Author: Jordan Kinghorn

Politicians will say anything and everything to increase approval for their political agendas with no regard for truth or logic. The only barrier against their tall tales is objective and clear research done by academics and experts that sheds light on the realistic consequences of a piece of legislation or regulation. Recently, there has been a lot of speculation and uncertainty on the effects of Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). Will it decrease costs and increase access for the uninsured or exacerbate the rising costs of health care and the federal debt crisis? In wake of these questions, experts and policymakers have also been discussing alternatives to the Affordable Care Act; reform that will actually be able to increase access and lower costs of healthcare while still maintaining high quality and safety. In addition, it is difficult to decide how to best address the rising costs of health care when no one knows why costs are rapidly rising and where national health care funds can best be spent. The health care crisis is a serious problem, and if current trends remain unchanged, official estimates project that U.S. health spending may rise from around $2.5 trillion to $4.6 trillion by 2020.

In response to a lack of data on private health care costs, an unprecedented health research initiative known as the  Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI) is to provide researchers, policymakers, and consumers the information they need to uncover the truth about health care spending. On September 20, the launch of the Health Care Cost Institute was announced by a panel of top health care researchers and economists. Dr. Stephen T. Parente, one of the Health Care Cost Institute’s board members, is the American Action Forum’s Academic Chair for Healthcare Policy and an national expert on using administrative databases, particularly Medicare and health insurer data, for health policy research. Accordingly, the Health Care Cost Institute is going to provide data on the costs of health care from four leading private sector insurers: Aetna, Humana, Kaiser Permanente and the UnitedHealth Group, who will supply biannual information on more than five billion medical claims, representing more than $1 trillion in spending.

In the past, researchers have only had half the data on health care costs, but with the data provided by HCCI on billions of private medical claims from the year 2000 until now, researchers no longer have to be frustrated with the lack of data on the private health care market. As reported by The New York Times, the claims data will include the price, volume, and intensity of care being delivered to people with private coverage from one of the four insurers. Furthermore, Medicare data will be used to compare cost information with private health plans.

By providing vital data on the cost of health care, the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI) will enable researchers and policymakers to discover why health care is so expensive and bring America closer to solving her health care crisis. Proponents of Obama’s PPACA will be disarmed of their farfetched claims, while opponents will be able to develop new health care reform proposals based on substantial public and private health care data.